"PULP" MAGAZINES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23121, 20 August 1938, Page 14

"PULP" MAGAZINES

Questioned about the importation, of those cheap American publications usually described as "pulp" magazines Mr. Nash, as Minister of Customs, explained the policy of tho Government toward the supervision of reading matter from overseas. It was to allow the greatest possible liberty, excluding only publications which were obscene, or advocated violence. This is a reasonable and sensible course. To establish any kind of a censorship whether by the Customs Department or any other agency is to create more problems than arc solved. The police can act against obscenity or the advocacy of violence. They have the necessary power under the law. With this decision there remains untouched, as Mr. Nash realised, a type of magazine about which there has been a good deal of complaint. Without being actually obscene, in the legal sense, they may be vulgarly suggestive, or show an undertone of nastiness making them undesirable mental food for the young —of any age. Cood taste and a feeling for genuine literary worth would rule them out immediately, but they are likely to fall into the hands of many whose judgment has not matured enough to make them reject palpable trash. Mr. Nash believes that a ban on the importation of such magazines would simply create a furtive trade in them. He is probably right in that. He is trying to have the trade abandoned by consent by those who import reading matter. It is a worthy effort, which should be wished well, but it also is full of difficulties. If the Minister does not succeed as he deserves to do, the stronger methods he hints at may be needed.